Our future's more feudal than futuristic

Having played too many video games in my youth, I have a bit of a soft spot for the medieval period. Don't you just, like me, hanker after the simplicity of those bygone days of knights, maidens and Whitsun Ales?

All the food was organic, everyone was religious, and social media's invention lay many centuries hence. Damsels needed rescuing and the manly ideal of the knight – equal parts murderous maniac and emotional softy – reigned supreme. If a chap needed a safe space, he had to go and conquer the Holy Land to find one.

Granted, it wasn't all roses – more a pocket full of posies. Dying of an abscess at the age of 34, or perhaps carking it along with the whole of your village after some fleas hopped on rattus rattus somewhere in China and spread the Black Death around Europe doesn't sound entirely positive, even if quite familiar.

It can't have been all bad, though. I, for one, am waiting for those pointy boots to make their comeback. Still, I'm happy to be alive now and not then. A childhood bout of pneumonia in all likelihood would have seen me done for: a tincture of stinging nettles and ground-up spiders would probably have been less effective than the antibiotics I took.

What's more, during the good old days of medieval serfdom people like you and me were bound to a plot of land by the will of our landlord. We were allowed to subsist on whatever we grew, but we had to fork over a substantial amount of the excess to our local liege.

Travel, too, was restricted. Only with our lord's permission could we leave the village. Other basic rights, such as marrying, changing occupation, or disposing of property, were, too, only possible with the say-so of our social superiors. To make matters worse, the diet of turnips and beans would have soon become tiresome.

Mercifully, we have left that all behind, along with toxic notions of acting chivalrously (read: toxic masculinity). Yet, look around and you would be forgiven in thinking that some of the hallmarks of our feudal past are making a comeback. That we are careering straight into neo-feudalism is, of course, a right-wing conspiracy theory. According to Wikipedia, it is the kind of tosh peddled by 4chan and The Daily Stormer. However, as even the least observant minds amongst us will have noticed, the difference between a conspiracy theory and conspiracy fact is now the passing of a few weeks.

Just look, for example, at taxes. We now labour under an oppressively onerous tax burden, with some lucky souls paying an effective 93% top tax rate. Some of the rest of us will be grateful to keep two-fifths of our income. If we're fortunate enough to die with some cash in the bank, the government will take their cut of that too. More than ever we work for the state, not for ourselves. Gargantuan and needlessly complex, the tax code is designed to be abused and circumvented by those who know how, leaving the little people to stump up a king's ransom only for the Treasury to immediately flush it down the toilet.

Travel, too, is not what it once was. Councils across the land are deciding to hinder the movement of their ungrateful subjects: Oxford's wise leaders are divvying up the city into segments, with travel between them restricted. The plans, according to a county council travel chief, will go ahead regardless as to whether people want it or not. Similar machinations are afoot in Canterbury. In Cambridge, too, the local council is poised to levy a £5 toll on anyone idiotic enough to drive in or out of the city between 7am and 7pm.

In previous days, our suffering was justified spiritually. Our hardships here on earth would pay some kind of dividend when we eventually get upstairs. Today, our god is Gaia: our sufferings are in her name and everything done to protect The Climate™. While the priests have changed their garb and have put down the crucifixes, a similar religious fervour inspires them. Climate reparations will be a future tithe due. If not environmentalism, gendermania or racial hysteria will work just as well.

I recognise I am not the first to latch on to the idea of a return to feudalism: Joel Kotkin has a book on the very topic which I am admittedly yet to read. Yet the parallels are startling once you begin to think about it. Ever more of us are unable to purchase homes, and instead rent from a landlord; the independence gained by becoming a property-owner is increasingly out of reach. The stratification of society – economically, culturally, socially – worsens daily. The massive transfer of wealth that took place during the crime of lockdown merely accelerated this process, entrenching the power of a hyper-affluent few. That very un-medieval concept – the middle class – is taking a hammering.

The world view of the new aristocracy is plain. We miserable souls, burdened as many of us are with the original sin of having any combination of white skin, male genitalia and a preference for the opposite sex, must atone. Indelibly marked by the sins of our Western ancestors, we must make good our innate evil somehow; giving up the civilisation and the proceeds of centuries of hard-earned prosperity is a good start.

Hence the World Economic Forum agenda is parroted dutifully by each elected representative (and in the case of the UK, the unelected ones, too). We will own nothing and we will be happy. And if we're not? They don't say, but I imagine it sounds a bit like 'rough chit'.

It is now 641 years since Wat Tyler led the Peasants' Revolt. Lords knows how long it will be until another Wat Tyler makes himself known. Given that the original had his head chopped off, it is not a wholly appealing act to follow. Perhaps, instead, a rebellion at the ballot box will take place – but with faith in our democratic system (Our Democracy™) reaching an all-time ebb, don't be surprised if apathy reigns supreme.

But something has to give, or so one would think. At least back in the mists of time concept we had concepts such as noblesse oblige – a belief that has gone the way of chivalry, the Dodo and the rotary dial telephone. It seems that every decision made by those in power is directly aimed to be as detrimental as possible for the people of this country.

So, where's our Wat Tyler?